Rainy Day Friends

by Jill Shalvis

  “I’m fine.”

  She slid him a look. “You know Mom taught us to think before we act, so know that when I slap the shit out of you for lying to me that I thoroughly thought about it first.” Setting down her fork, she drew in a deep breath. “Now I’m going to ask you again. Are you okay?”

  He closed his eyes against the worry and concern in hers. “Working on it.”

  She sighed and set her head on his shoulder. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. You’re already doing it.”

  “If I could kill Brittney, I would.”

  “Lyssa—”

  “I would,” she said fiercely. “For what she did to you. To your adorable babies.”

  “Stop,” he said gently. “We’re okay.”

  “You’re not. You won’t get serious again.”

  “And that’s not a bad thing,” he said. “It’s about the girls now. Not me.”

  “So you’re going to abstain from love until what, they turn eighteen?”

  At the yes she saw on his face, she made a soft sound of distress and her eyes filled.

  “Lyssa,” he said again, pained.

  “Ignore me,” she whispered. “It’s mostly baby hormones. I’m driving Owen insane.”

  “Just Owen?”

  She made a half-hearted attempt to slug him, but since he’d been the one to teach her how to hit, it still hurt. “Owen’s never going to stop loving you,” he said. The guy had loved her since they’d met in second grade, although every time Alyssa had a baby, her emotions went haywire for months afterward, driving them all a little insane.

  Suddenly came the sound of either elephants storming the house or his own two heathens up and looking for him. They tore into the kitchen, hair rioting around their heads, eyes still sleepy, wearing matching-footed Supergirl PJs.

  His babies loved superheroes.

  They had their mother’s unruly curls in a softer version of the dark brown of his own hair. For the most part they also had their mother’s temperament, which meant that their every thought and emotion showed all over their faces. “Hey,” he said, his smile fading because as they leapt at him, climbing into his arms, he could see worry and fear and tears in their eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re home!” Samantha said, voice muffled against his shoulder. “You’re finally home. We waited all night for you.”

  He craned his neck and met his sister’s gaze. She was just as confused as he. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You didn’t sleep?”

  Samantha shook her head, all her dark hair flying around her head like an explosion in a mattress warehouse. “We kept sneaking out of bed to check your room,” she said. “Grandma almost caught us twice.”

  Sierra tapped her sister on the arm. Samantha met her gaze and they did that thing they did, the silent communication that only they could understand, before Sam turned back to Mark. “Sierra even fake-snored. She’s better at it than me.”

  Sierra, her face once again buried in Mark’s other shoulder, nodded and he tightened his grip on the only anchors in his always-spinning-too-fast world. From the corner of his eye he saw Alyssa pick up Elsa and leave the kitchen to give them privacy.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.

  “Because you were mad at us for staying up past our bedtime the other night. And this was very past our bedtime,” Sam said. “And maybe you were busy catching bad guys.”

  The dead organ in his chest rolled over and exposed its underbelly. “Listen to me, okay? If you’re worried, you call me. If you need me, you call me. I don’t care if I’m working, if I’m sleeping, or if you think I’m angry at you—if you need me, I’m there for you, do you understand?”

  Samantha lifted her head and stared at him, her eyes just a little too old for her age. “Because that’s your job as our daddy?”

  “Because I love you,” he said firmly.

  AT MARK’S LOW, fiercely uttered words, Lanie stopped short in the doorway to the Capriottis’ personal kitchen. She’d come to meet Cora by request. She hadn’t expected to see Mark leaning back against the counter, looking hollow and exhausted to the bone, a daughter in each arm, eyes closed, his jaw pressed to the top of one of their little bedheads, explaining to them how much he loved them.

  It was an intimate moment, private and . . . the most moving thing she’d ever seen.

  “Daddy?” Samantha whispered. “Are you sorry you’re not still The Force?”

  Mark cupped her head and made her look at him. “What?”

  “You had to leave Star Wars and come home to take care of us. You had to give up the fight.”

  Mark looked confused at first, and then he laughed softly and pressed his forehead to Samantha’s. “Sweetness, Star Wars is a story. It’s made-up. When you overheard whatever you overheard—which we’ll circle back to in a minute and go over the eavesdropping rules for six-year-olds—it wasn’t about Star Wars.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. I was in the Air Force, which is one of the branches of our government’s military. It means I was in the fight to keep America safe and whole. On this planet.”

  Sierra giggled and Mark was still smiling until Sam said, “But you gave up the Air Force for us. And it was a big, important job, Grandma said so. You had big, important things to do.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But not as important as you two.” He paused as if considering his words carefully. “I wanted to come home. I want you both to know that.”

  “You mean when Mommy left?” Sam asked. “And when Sierra stopped talking?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice a little strained now. “When Mommy left you both in Arizona. The minute I found out, I came home to get you.” He cupped Sierra’s head, still pressed tightly to the crook of his neck. “I gave up that job for a better one—taking care of you two. You’re the most important things in my life.”

  At that, Sierra lifted her head and stared into Mark’s eyes and he stared back, like he was willing her to believe.

  Lanie was literally glued to the hallway. She couldn’t move. She knew she had absolutely no business standing there, but her feet had disconnected from her brain’s control. And so had her heart, because it was thumping hard and fast. Her eyes were burning too. She’d let him think she’d misjudged him and that was as bad as actually doing it. It also made her feel uncomfortably like her mom, who was very quick to judge and even quicker to cut someone out of her life.

  “More important than the vines?” Samantha was asking her dad. “Because Great-Grandpa says nothing is more important than the vines.”

  “Baby, you’re way more important than the vines.”

  “More important than Grandma?”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “But don’t tell her.”

  “More important than—”

  “Anything,” Mark broke in to say. “Anything, Samantha. You and Sierra are my life. You get me?”

  The twins nodded and he kissed each of their foreheads and set them down. “We good?” he asked.

  “We good,” Samantha said and fist-bumped him.

  Sierra did the same. Mark caught Sierra’s hand and reeled her in once more, rubbing his nose to hers in an Eskimo kiss that made her giggle. “You know, don’t you, sweetness, that you can talk to me. Right?”

  Sierra bobbed her head.

  “Okay, then.” He let her go and she went running off after Samantha. He waited until she’d vanished out the side door before turning and landing his gaze right on Lanie.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For eavesdropping again?”

  Feeling like a jerk, she shook her head. “No, although I’m sorry about that too.” She paused. “I’ve been rude, I think.”

  “You think, or you know?”

  His tone said he was teasing, but she still blew out a sigh. “I know.” She was too nervous for this. Cora had asked her to meet for breakfast to go over some of the preliminary sample designs she’d come up with before presenti
ng them to the rest of the family. The pressure of creating effective graphic design and branding for the wide variety of products the winery provided was starting to keep Lanie awake at night. She needed both eye-catching and inspirational designs to encourage customers to bring the product home. She hoped she’d done that. She wasn’t sure.

  In either case, Cora had dangled the carrot of a homemade breakfast.

  Since Lanie’s usual choice of breakfast was a Pop-Tart and maybe an apple, she’d been suitably lured, hoping for bacon, feeling more excited about the prospect of that than anything in recent memory. “I really am sorry,” she said softly.

  Mark stared at her for a long beat and then, though she had no idea why—maybe it was because she knew she looked so miserable at her mistake—he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does, I—”

  “Forget it,” he said and began rifling through some open food containers on the counter.

  “Why is there enough tension in here to give me a headache?” Cora asked, coming in behind Lanie.

  Lanie jumped and opened her mouth to explain, before realizing her boss was talking to her son.

  Mark snorted and grabbed a box of Frosted Flakes cereal before striding out of the room without calling Lanie out for being the rude one.

  Cora watched him go, pensive. “Sometimes I forget he’s still adjusting to civilian life.” She turned to face Lanie. “I’m not going to apologize for him because he’s been through hell and back. Several times. I know his heart is in the right place so instead, I’m going to ask you for understanding and compassion to see past his alpha asshole-ness.”

  “You don’t have to ask me for anything of the sort,” Lanie said. “It wasn’t what you think.”

  Cora wasn’t ready to let it go. “He did three tours of duty. He’s only thirty-two, but can you imagine the things he’s seen and done?” She took a deep, shuddery breath and her eyes went suspiciously shiny. “It’s awful what we as a country ask of our men and women who serve. But we do ask, and they answer. Mark was good at what he did, very good. He’d just been promoted when his wife of four years took off.” Her lips tightened. “Just up and vanished on her babies. That was nearly a year ago now. He took the deputy sheriff position because he is who he is, but it’s not the same as what he was doing, and it’s certainly not what he wanted.”

  Lanie’s heart hurt for them. After all, she knew a little bit about being betrayed. “That’s awful.”

  “Turned out, Brittney thought being a mom was too hard. She’s living in some ashram in Australia finding herself these days, letting the universe fill her cup.” She shook her head. “He won’t thank me for telling you any of this, but I wanted you to understand.”

  “I do.”

  Cora gave her a small smile. “I know what we look like, from the outside looking in. Busybodies, noisy, stubborn, the entire lot of us. But we’re more too.”

  Lanie nodded. “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  Cora smiled. “Is your family big and intruding too?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “So they’re not crazy.”

  “Well, I didn’t say that,” Lanie said. Her amusement faded. “It’s just my parents, and we’re . . . estranged.” Except it wasn’t anything as concrete as that, really. Her parents were . . . remote, too focused on themselves and their careers and always had been. A child hadn’t changed that—in fact, according to her mom, it’d only made things worse. Not a surprise, given the circumstances. “So, big and intruding and nosy or whatever you want to call yourselves,” she said, “at least you’re all connected by blood and stay close and that’s . . . amazing to me.” She paused. “And maybe also baffling. And a little scary to boot.”

  Cora’s smile reached her eyes and warmed them as she took Lanie’s hand. “There’s one more thing you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s not blood that connects us. Which means you’re a part of us now.” And then, leaving Lanie speechless, she proceeded to make the most wonderful crepes she’d ever had in less than fifteen minutes—and bacon!—after which they worked at the kitchen table for hours, poring over what Lanie had so far.

  Work and family. Family and work. It was all the same here, and that was just beginning to sink in.

  Chapter 6

  The human body is 90 percent water, so basically we’re all just cucumbers with anxiety.

  Over the next week, Lanie learned something about herself that she’d not paid any attention to in the past. She liked her work, a lot. But something odd was happening to her resolve of remaining emotionally distant.

  She found herself sucked into the daily life of this beautiful place. And not just with the twins either, although they spent a lot of time underfoot. Literally. They loved Lanie’s shoes—one of her vices—so they were constantly coming in after school to see which pair she was wearing that day, waiting to try them on. Lanie had actually brought in two spare sets to her desk today so the twins could each wear a pair at the same time, although she’d had to chase Gracie away from stealing them—twice. She’d finally gone back to her cottage for a pair of her old sneakers and given them to the dog.

  Emotionally distant, her ass . . .

  The offices were ramping up for the upcoming tourist and wedding season, and everyone was working hard. Uncle Jack’s very spoiled teenage twin grandkids were working as office assistants and Mia had them running ragged, as she was overworked herself. When they complained that she was being mean, Mia brought Holden into the office.

  He was a good-looking guy in his early twenties and in his prime, though at the moment he appeared to be done in. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt covered in various stains, was sunburned, and looked like he needed a nap and a burger and not in any particular order. “What can I do for you?” he asked Mia in a polite voice.

  Mia looked at her cousins while jabbing a finger at Holden. “There,” she said. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes,” one of them said. “He’s got a southern accent. It’s cute. He’s cute. Twice this week we’ve seen him trying to make friends with River, but she’s mean to him. We wanted to be . . . not mean to him. But Grandpa told us if we tried to date him he’d take away our phones.”

  Holden grimaced but didn’t say anything, just looked at Mia, brows raised. Waiting.

  Mia shook her head at her cousins in disbelief. “So you’re disrespectful on top of spoiled.” She sighed. “Just like me. But unlike me, you’re not going to take another decade to get things right. Holden is one of our best employees.”

  Holden looked a little surprised at this.

  “He works his ass off,” Mia said. “He’s been at it since four thirty this morning and he should be off work now, but you know what? I called and he came in to ask me how he could help. That’s pride of workmanship and dedication, and it’s rewarded here. But those rewards have to be earned. Go tell Owen that I sent you out there to scrub barrels.”

  They both opened their mouths in protest, but Mia lifted a hand and said, “File your complaints with someone who cares. I’m done with you in these offices today. Come back when you understand hard work.” She waited until they were gone. “I’d pray for strength and patience,” she said to Lanie. “But then I’d need to pray for bail money too.” Then she turned to Holden. “How’s that new truck?”

  For the first time he dropped his deadpan expression and grinned, and Lanie saw a glimpse of his personality.

  “Fuckin’ rocks,” he said. “I can’t believe your mom and Grandpa got it for me.”

  “Our horse wrangler needs a truck for his image.” Mia tossed him a soda from the fridge, and he thanked her and left. When he was gone, Mia said, “He’s a great kid.”

  “He’s not a kid, he’s your age,” Lanie said.

  “I know. And I’ve had a crush on him since he first showed up here at age fifteen, beaten half to death and on his own.” She lifted a shoulder.
“You know my mom, she collects lost souls. So she took him in and he’s been family ever since. Just about broke her heart when he went into the army two years ago, but he said he had to find his own way. He’s on leave for another month-ish.”

  “So you no longer have a crush on him?”

  “Oh, I do,” Mia said. “But Mom long ago told me that if I ever slept with him, she’d take away my phone.”

  Lanie laughed. “So you really do get your cousins.”

  “Yep.”

  Lanie shook her head. “But I’m pretty sure no one tells you what to do.”

  “There’s that . . .” Mia looked at the door where Holden had vanished and sighed. “But he’s done being wild and I’m just getting going. I don’t want to be reined in.”

  Cora poked her head in. “Scrubbing barrels?” she asked.

  Mia sighed. “Those little tattletales. I suppose you want me to go easier on them.”

  “On the contrary,” Cora said. “Holden caught them smoking weed in the storage shed yesterday so I vote for doubling whatever workload you’ve got for them. My favorite punishment is making them work in the barn with their hands tied together so they learn teamwork.” Then she winked at them both and left.

  Lanie went to bed early, tired but . . . feeling pretty good. She was actually starting to enjoy herself here. Yeah, the winery was like a small town, complete with the gossip mill, and lunch continued to be a daily telenovela, but at least she was no longer the New Girl. River had fallen into that role. Oddly enough, Lanie was pretty sure River was avoiding her at all costs, but that didn’t bother Lanie any. The girl was young, apparently very alone, and the Capriottis had gathered her to their collective bosom.

  Not a surprise, given who Cora was. “She’s a baby having a baby,” she’d told Lanie quietly that first day. “She was living out of her car and I think she’s running away from something. Or someone.”

  Say what you wanted about the Capriottis, but they were a protective, loyal bunch and they rallied around their own.

  Unlike Lanie, River took to the attention, easily embracing the family. Lanie had to admire the spirit, but she was still happy at the farthest corner of the farthest table. She’d gone back to eating her bagged lunches. She’d had to, for the sake of her clothes. Nobody liked it and they teased her about it, but . . . they let her be.